Apparent source of NSA leaks comes forward

Security

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>>who exposed the government's top-secret collection of phone records has revealed himself. so says the publication that broke the story last week. "the guardian" pulled the covers off an ongoing
u.s. intelligence
program that's quietly collected the phone records of millions of americans in the name of
national security
. tonight the self-identified source of that story has stepped forward to explain himself. while the
u.s. director of national intelligence
in an exclusive interview with nbc news is disputing some of his claims. chief
foreign affairs
correspondent
andrea mitchell
spoke to
james clapper
and joins us from our washington newsroom.

>> reporter: good evening. tonight "the guardian" posted the interview with the intelligence contractor who wants to go public, to that newspaper as well as "the
washington post
".

>>my name is ed
snowden
. i'm 29 years old. i work for
booz allen hamilton
in hawaii.

>> reporter: he says he copied top-
secret documents
, packed his bags and. went to
hong kong
to share them with a reporter from "the guardian."

>>i had the authority to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a
federal judge
to even the presidentfy had a personal e-mail.

>> reporter: his claim is contradicted by what the
director of national intelligence
told us exclusively on saturday.

>>we are under strict court supervision. the notion that we're trolling through everyone's e-mails and voyeuristically reading them or listening to everyone's
phone calls
is, on its face, absurd. we couldn't do it even if we wanted to. i assure you, we don't want to.

>> reporter: why did he do it?
snowden
says he became disenchanted while working for the nsa.

>>i go this is something that's not our place to decide. the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.

>> reporter: animal lis like
snowden
use the world's most sophisticated computers to sift through a huge amount of data. even more will be stored in this new facility in utah, all legal since
2008
, re-authorized by congress in
2012
and reviewed every three months by a
secret court
. critics said today more oversight is needed.

>>the fact that every call i make to my friends and family is noted, where i am, the length of it, the date, that concerns me. particularly because americans didn't know this.

>> reporter: i asked the intelligence chief about the leaker before
snowden
revealed himself.

>>this is someone who, for whatever reason, has chosen to violate a
secret trust
for this country. damage that these revelations incur are huge.

>> reporter: can i assume from that, infer -- that there has been a referral to track down the leak? it.

>>absolutely. we have -- nsa has filed a crimes report on this already.

>> reporter: tonight boozal len confirmed he worked for the company less than tlooe months. they said if the reports are accurate about the leaks they are shocked and they would work closely with the authorities on the investigation.